Ugly In Pink
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: When Dr. Cortex's niece falls mysteriously ill, he blackmails a certain bandicoot by the name of Coco into taking her place. There's just one problem: she absolutely does NOT want to go. How does she escape, and who comes to her rescue?


**I own nothing but fic ideas. Jaja.  
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><p>"This looks terrible." Spinning slowly round and round as she stood before a full length mirror, a lanky, orange-furred fourteen year old with long limbs and knobly knees grimaced as she caught sight of the pink ruffles and posey-lined lace on the cuffs of the dress she was wearing.<p>

"So _lovely_," exclaimed a middle-aged man with darkened hair, his hands clasped together gleefully as he looked upon the sight before him.

"It looks more like a nightmare," the teenaged bandicoot replied in a disgusted tone of voice.

"Now, now, Coco," the older man said. "It looked positively beautiful on my sister when she was _your_ age, and you simply must wear something appropriate for the upcoming, annual villainous ball."

"Yeah, but I'm not _even_ a villian. I'm just me, Coco the bandicoot. I'm the one that does karate, I'm the one who leads a study group so that my older brother can even manage to keep up with school-type work, and that's when I'm _not_ busy fighting off your own goons, Dr. Cortex! I'm not some pretty, fairy-esque prom queen-to-be."

"Oh, are you finished yet?" Cortex replied in a tired, annoyed sounding voice.

"No, in fact. I'm _not_," Coco snapped back. "Not really. Do I even have a _say_ in this matter? Like, at all? I mean, I never even said I wanted to go to this dumb villainous ball, you just sort of forced me into it all. You blackmailed me, in fact. All because that neice of yours came down with a mysterious case of the flu. Flu, my hiney. I bet she's faking it just so she doesn't have to wear _this_ old thing."

"That's enough now," Cortex replied, before thumbing over in a direction somewhere to the left. "As you already know for a fact, if you refuse to do this, then I won't let poor Pura out of his cage at all. He'll be there all night long. _Aww_, would you just look at the poor little kitty now? Wanting nothing more than to be _freeeed_."

"Dr. Cortex, stop it!" the bandicoot protested, but the little man had already walked away from the cage, heading instead for the door that would lead out of the room. "Go on then, Coco - make your decision. You have..." the scientist paused to check his wrist watch "...exactly five minutes to decide."

"But _Dr. Cortex_-" Coco began, but the little man had already left the room, shutting the door tightly behind himself as he went, making sure it slammed to.

"Oh, _jeez_!" Coco exclaimed, looking over her reflection in horror once more as Pura mewed from the nearby cage. "Oh, don't worry. I'll get you out."

Quickly hurrying over to the cage, the teenager knelt down as best she could amonst the ruffled skirt of her gown, before taking a hairpin from her blonde locks, using it pick at and - ultimately - unlock the padlock that had been placed at the door of the cage. "See, Pura? That all wasn't so bad after all, now was it?"

The small tiger mewed in response, before nudging his head in the direction of the nearby open window when he felt certain he'd heard a noise coming from that direction.

"_Psst_!"

Looking over to the open window of the room herself, the Cocol blinked in surprise, before hurrying over even more closely to see none other than her own brother bandicoot hanging there, half way in through the room, having climbed up the branches of a nearby tree to get there.

"What are you doing here, Crash?" the ginger-fured critter asked, a hand on her hip as she took a step closer toward the window.

"I was just chasing some frogs around outside, looking for some wild Wumpa fruit, and then I heard all this commotion," he answered her, though in reality he sounded as if he was just speaking a bunch of mushed-mashed gobbledygook - good thing his sister could at least understand him. "Anyway, I thought I heard a distress call, and now I can see why. And speaking of distress calls, _why _are you wearing Barbie's rejected prom dress?"

Rolling her eyes and sighing, Coco said to him, "Supposedly it's some sort of tradition that a girl is wear it to this, this _villainous_ ball or whatever it is. And since Cortex's _darling_ niece is supposedly out of commission, he tried to blackmail into wearing it and going with him to the ball instead!"

"Sounds horrifying," Crash admitted with a look of disdain, before adding, "So how was he intending to blackmail you anyway?"

"Oh, by keeping Pura locked in a cage over in the corner," Coco explained, before lifting her hairpin upward, so that it gleamed somewhat in the light coming in through the moonlit window.

"Well," Crash answered her, "I definitely don't want to go to this so-called villainous ball with you, but I _can_ take a damsel in distress such as yourself to the one-night carnival here in town. So what d'you say? Wanna come?"

"Are you kidding?" Coco replied. "I'd love to come. Just let me change out of this ghastly thing…"

Skipping over to the walk-in closet, the bandicoot quickly rushed to pull the ruffled dress up and over her head, ripping it a little in the process, as well as messing up her hair. By the time she had rid herself of it, she was left in a camisol and a pair of yellow shorts. Her hair still a bonefide mess, she stepped out of the closet anyway and did a pirouette for a brother as she did so.

"What d'you think? Should I change again, or-?"

"Nah, that's definitely improvement enough," Crash answered her, before beckoning her on over to the window. "Now come on and hurry before Dr. Cortex comes back and finds us!"

"But what _would _Cortex say if he actually saw me like this, ditching the villainous ball?"

"Well, we'll cross that chicken when it hatches, er, however the saying goes," Crash answered her, before reaching for Pura and holding it under one arm like a football, before offering his other hand to his sister, helping her on out of the window, as well.

Throwing caution to the wind, the pair of bandicoots -with their feline friend in-tow-quickly scaled down the tree, happy to be free to go to the carnival, as opposed to some silly, superfluous ball.


End file.
